


Tentacles & Misogyny

by Brumeier



Series: After the Eclipse [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Community: ushobwri, Gen, Small Towns, Supernatural Elements, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 14:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12278355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: It was just another day at the lake, until Debra Jo had a run in with some tentacles.





	Tentacles & Misogyny

**Author's Note:**

> For Monster Fest: Lovecraftian Day at [You Should Be Writing](https://ushobwri.dreamwidth.org/171390.html).

Debra Jo Babcock stalked up the boat launch looking half drowned and mad enough to spit. Archie sat in his camp chair sucking on the stem of granddad’s pipe, amused and disgusted in equal measure. Fishing was a man’s sport, always had been. Archie’d sell them bait and rent them boats because he had to make a living, same as everyone, but he believed the killing of food was men’s work.

“There’s somethin’ in the lake,” Debra Jo said when she got close.

“Rough seas today?”

“I’m serious, Archie.” 

Debra Jo thrust her arm in Archie’s face. There were lesions on the skin there, perfect circles, blistered and red.

“Huh.”

“That all you have to say? That thing almost killed me!”

“Could be anything,” Archie said dismissively, though he couldn’t think what kind of anything it might be off the top of his head. He moved the pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. It wasn’t lit on account of his asthma.

“Bullshit. I’m callin’ Sheriff Ramly.”

Debra Jo stomped inside the Bait & Tackle to use the only working pay telephone left in the village.

Within the half hour the parking lot was full of cars. Sheriff Ramly stood out on the end of the boat launch with Debra Jo, Walt Liddle from the local Forestry office, and Skeeter Dunlop, who was the next best thing to county animal control and easier to get hold of. Young Tommy Bunch was out there too, getting in the way like always; he’d come to sell Archie some worms.

“I reckon we’ll need your boat, Archie,” Sheriff Ramly said as he ambled over. “Skeeter wants to take a closer look, see what we’re dealing with.”

“Fifteen dollars an hour.”

“Aw, come on now. This is police business.”

“Ain’t no crime been committed. Fifteen dollars an hour.” Archie jabbed his pipe in Sheriff Ramly’s direction. “And don’t tell me you’re abscondin’ with it either.”

“That’s appropriating. And that only happens in movies.” The sheriff pulled out his wallet and handed Archie thirty dollars. “Highway robbery, Arch.”

“Gotta make a living.”

Archie watched as everyone got in the boat. Except for Tommy, of course, who nearly fell in the lake in his eagerness to join the expedition and had to be firmly sent on his way.

Two hours later they were back with nothing to show but sunburn and mosquito bites. Debra Jo left, muttering angrily about tentacles and misogyny, and Sheriff Ramly pulled a couple cokes from the chest cooler and passed them around.

"You let me know if you see anything," he said to Archie. "Debra Jo had a run-in with something, and the sooner we can identify it the better."

"Women shouldn't be fishin'," Archie replied. "That's six bucks for the cokes."

"Best put it on my tab." Sheriff Ramly tipped his head back and drained his bottle in one go. He saluted Walt and Skeeter, tossed the bottle in the trash, and ambled off.

*o*o*o*

Fishermen these days were spoiled. There were all kinds of bait and lures that took the guesswork out of it. Archie liked it old school, as the kids said: live bait, a skillful cast, and a boatload of patience. Not lures that hummed and moved and flicked around, doing all the hard work. The more innovations that came around, the lazier people got.

Archie grumbled the whole time he was restocking shelves with more of the new-fangled spin lures. Business had been up ever since Debra Jo’s encounter in the lake. People wanted to catch whatever it was. Archie liked the increased revenue but not the increased work. 

He reached up and touched Lucky as he went into the storeroom for a box of stink bait. Archie’d had that fish mounted when he was just a young kid. Lucky was a twenty-pound largemouth, just as pretty as you want, and when Archie’s wife Wanda left him all those years ago she’d taken a sledgehammer to the fish. Worst loss of Archie’s life.

Before Sally Everly had run off that eclipse dumpster, Archie had pulled Lucky out of it looking like he’d just been mounted that self-same day. It was a miracle and he didn’t care what anyone said about evil creations sent by the Devil to corrupt the village; Lucky was a sign of hope for all fishermen.

The bell over the door jangled and Cissy Morris came trooping in with her three younger sisters.

“Mr. Archie, we need some bait.”

“So? You know where it is.” Archie took up his post behind the register and kept a close eye on the girls. 

What was Eddie Morris thinking, encouraging his girls to fish and hunt and play sports? Well, clearly the man felt cheated out of the sons he should’ve had. Those four girls got into all kids of trouble, and told anyone who’d listen that they could do anything a boy could do. Except dig in the dirt for worms.

Cissy pulled one of the Styrofoam containers out of the cooler and carefully placed it on the counter.

“Two dollars, twenty-five cents,” he said. Girls or no, he did like to hear his register make that dinging noise when he opened it up to put more money in.

“We’re gonna find that lake monster,” Cissy said as she counted out her nickels. “We’ll be famous!”

"Ain't no lake monster," Archie said. He re-counted the change when Cissy dropped it in his hand. "Probably just a water snake or something."

"My daddy says it could be a poctopus," LeAnn said. She was the youngest sister, and always the one most covered in dirt, markers, and food stains.

"You tell your daddy there ain't no such thing as freshwater octopus."

"You'll see once we catch it," Cissy replied. "Come on, girls. Let's go!"

They all trooped out the door and Archie watched through the window as they got on their bikes and pedaled away. Not an hour later they were back, LeAnn in tears and her sisters looking pale and grim.

"Mr. Archie, can I borrow a quarter to call Daddy? He needs to pick us up. LeAnn can't ride no more."

Archie was going to say no. He wasn't in the habit of just giving money away, after all. But then he got a good luck at little LeAnn's leg. She had the same round blisters Debra Jo had, only they spiraled up one leg. Probably not a water snake, then.

He handed Cissy the quarter. "Tell your daddy to call the Sheriff, too. He'll want to know."

In the meanwhile, Archie was going to make sure the soda cooler was full up.

*o*o*o*

Seemed like half the village was down at the lake. Word of LeAnn's injury had spread and people had come out in force. Archie rented out all his boats, including one to Sheriff Ramly who was taking Walt, Skeeter, and Debra Jo back out on the lake.

"If I have to use myself as bait I sure as hell will," Debra Jo said. She had a fishing knife strapped to her leg. Skeeter had brought a big ole basket net on a pole.

"Let's not get carried away," Sheriff Ramly advised.

It was a little late for that, as far as Archie was concerned. Eddie Morris had showed up with a murderous look in his eye, vowing revenge on the creature that hurt his little girl. That same little girl was down on the shore eating up all the attention as she proudly showed off her injury.

Everyone got in their boats and followed the Sheriff out into the middle of the lake. Archie watched from his camp chair, armed with a pair of binoculars. 

"Any action yet?" Bill Everly popped open his own chair and plunked it down next to Archie's.

"Nah. They just went out."

Bill didn't have binoculars so he was using a rifle sight, one eye squeezed shut as he looked through it with the other.

"What do you think it is?"

"I don't rightly know," Archie replied. "Whatever it is, it don't belong here."

"You think the eclipse brought it? Like that dumpster?"

Huh. Archie hadn't thought of that. "Maybe."

They sat in silence after that, watching the boats out on the lake. Bill was a good guy and a solid fisherman. He'd married a girl from out of state, and she was a little odd, but Bill never tried to involve her in fishing and that was all right by Archie.

The scene out on the lake was pretty boring until Debra Jo stood up in the boat and started waving her arms around. Archie couldn’t hear what she was saying but she looked good and angry.

“Here we go,” Bill said when Debra Jo jumped out of the boat and into the lake.

Sheriff Ramly looked like he was shouting, and the other boats started to converge on the spot where Debra Jo went into the water. She was swimming away from the boat when Archie saw it. Hells bells, _everyone_ saw it without needing the aid of binoculars.

One long, curved tentacle rose up out of the lake, easily fifteen or twenty feet in the air, the whole of it undulating like a worm on a hook.

“Sweet Jesus,” Bill said. “You seeing this, Archie?”

“Wish I wasn’t,” Archie replied.

People on the shoreline were screaming and hollering, and the shots Sheriff Ramly was taking at the thing echoed across the lake. The tentacle slid back under water, much faster than it had appeared, and then there was a lot of roiling water and the humps of more tentacles could be seen.

It only lasted a few seconds, and then the surface of the lake smoothed out again and there was no sign of the creature. Archie figured there’d be no sign of Debra Jo, either, but there she was getting pulled back into the boat, knife clamped between her teeth.

“I reckon we ought to call Sally,” Bill said with a sigh.

*o*o*o*

Sally Everly strode down the boat launch with a big canvas bag on her shoulder and an annoyed expression on her face. She very clearly didn’t want to be there, and had sent Bill back to the store so they wouldn’t have to close it down for however long she’d be at the lake.

The group on the lakeshore had grown and everyone watched avidly as Sally set her bag down and then kneeled beside it. She pulled out what looked like a long, narrow funnel and dipped the small end into the water. She cupped her hands around the wide end and talked into it.

“I would like to address the creature in the lake,” she hollered, and then put her ear where her mouth just was.

The water started rippling about six feet away, and the gathered crowd gasped. Archie just clamped down on the stem of granddad’s pipe.

“Do you know how you got here?” Sally called into the funnel. There was another long pause while she listened. “I understand that, but we don’t have any females of your species here. Can you get back home?”

Archie wasn’t sure he was buying the fact that Sally was carrying on a conversation with a giant tentacle beast. Then again, he’d heard she sent the dumpster away and he never heard of anyone chatting with one of those either. Women could be damned unfathomable sometimes.

“I’ll relay your apologies. Just hang on a minute and I’ll see what I can do.”

Sally pulled the funnel out of the water and rummaged around in her bag. She pulled out something too small for Archie to see and cupped it in her hands. She murmured some words over it that didn’t sound like English and then threw it as far across the lake as she could. 

For a moment Archie was sure he saw something glow red, and then it splashed down. Everyone pointed, talking in hushed tones, as the water in that spot started to swirl, going faster and faster until it was a whirlpool. Sally put the funnel back in the water.

“That should do it. Good luck.”

A bit of tentacle poked up out of the lake and gave what looked to be a salute, and then the creature visibly swam into the whirlpool. For a long moment there was a churning roar of water, and a mass of tentacles, and then just like that it all stopped. Sally picked up her bag and got to her feet.

“All set,” she said as she walked past Archie.

“What did it say?” Debra Jo asked.

“He apologized for the misunderstanding. It was mating season when he got pulled away from home.”

“Mating season?” Debra Jo's face went white.

Sally just shrugged and went on her way.

The crowd began to wander away as well, until it was just Archie sitting out in his camp chair watching the sun set over the lake.

“Well, hell,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** It's been a long time since I've had so much fun writing original fic, but this 'verse has really taken hold of me. I love this crazy little village!


End file.
